Axedame agrees that the technology provides staffing solutions that have yet to reach public acceptance or full legality. “Undead workers are kind of a gray area as far as the feds are concerned. And you bet your boots the unions are fighting it. But since you don’t have to pay the dead minimum wage, the potential impact this could have on America’s bottom line is off the charts! We’re pretty sure we can get the government on board as long as the GOP stays in charge.”

He is the reason clowns so often seem
sinister, the reason mannequins and dolls
can be so unsettling, the reason a child’s
tricycle
sitting unattended in a front yard can be an image
suffused with dread. If he goes on
this way, who knows what other objects
will attain an aura of menace?

“You super folks must think we’re pretty damn foolish, especially us in the law enforcement community.”

Look at him leaning back with his feet up on the desk. Did he just walk out of Cool Hand Luke? Sheesh, you’d think a sheriff would want to be more dignified. “No sir. You and your brethren are integral to the fabric of society. We of The Union are grateful for your hard work and courage.” I can rattle that sort of crap off all day long.

That might seem funny to those who’ve ever bothered to attend these performances, to say that someone didn’t belong. The audience is always a motley sort–faculty and spouses, local musicians and artists, music students and jocks who have to attend so many of these things to get credit for required courses, waitresses and office workers desperate for some culture, their school-age children (alternately awed and bored to tears), homeless folks who need a warm place to sleep for a couple of hours, mentally and physically handicapped folks hauled out as someone’s idea of a good deed, and, of course, recreational drug users with nothing better to do.

Still, he didn’t belong. He was Gothic. Not like those kids who hang out at Hot Topic and think wearing black nail polish expresses their inner turmoil, their eternal angst. I’d seen Goths there before and he wasn’t Goth, he was Gothic–dark and looming, faintly chivalrous in manner, seemingly possessed of a great, tragic secret. I thought of Bronte’s Heathcliff.

“Go to hell, idiot,” I said, using an astringent tongue he’d understand. “I
am but a monumental slab of granite, and you, mortality, are like one of
the droppings of a fairly large corpulent deity–an ephemeral honor I would
rather pass me by.”

“And yet, you speak to me, mountain,” said the mote of humanity. “Why is
that?”

I considered that for a moment. The creature had a point.

“I don’t know,” I replied honestly.

Rated PG. Contains some profanity. Paradigms may shift without warning.

As you are no doubt aware, I am the issue of solid Dutch stock‚Äîthe prosperous Van Pelt family of St. Paul. Mine was a comfortable and happy childhood, and I spent much of it in the devoted service of the Great Old Pumpkin. For him, I cultivated an annual pumpkin patch. I also evangelized him in the community, relating the tale of how, every year on Hallowmas Eve, the day when the spiritual most strongly encroaches on the substantial, this mightiest of gourds would rise to revel across the world with the most sincere of his adorers. My neighbors were understandably skeptical; after all, not once had this superbeing ever chosen to grace my pumpkin patch or any other place in our town. I vowed that I would coax him into my backyard, and I set out in the manner of a learned man to discover how I might do this.

“Well, you know, Doc, safe is a relative thing in my profession, but I
have you on the headset, and I’m picking the lock on these handcuffs
as we’re talking. I think I’ll be fine, the piranhas are still 5 or 6
feet below me.”

“All right, but isn’t our conversation going to distract you?” I
asked. “I know you’re upset, but wouldn’t you rather call back at
another time?”

“I’d really like to talk about it, Doc. I always find talking to you
clears my mind and makes me more effective. I may need to go if the
henchmen come back, though.”

When the floods came, all us kids climbed into bed and pulled the covers up over our heads while our parents rushed about trying to do something to stop it. As the water level rose we could feel the beds lift off the floor, floating through our houses, bumping down our hallways and out our front doors.

We sat up in bed waved to one another as our beds merged onto the canal that now flowed between our houses. We shrieked and giggled as our beds spun and bumped along with the swirling water. Waves lapped at our boxsprings, but our covers were still warm and dry.